Soon after my parents' anniversary, school started for us all. Here are the obligatory back to school pictures :)
And not long after that, we were celebrating Vee's birthday. This year we went through several plans for celebrating. Vee has a group of kids they hang out with at school, and it's become a very close-knit group of friends, so the whole thing sort of happened around their changing interests-- and gosh, it was hard to keep up. Haha. I think Vee also maybe wanted be chill about it and not make a huge deal? I am honestly not sure. First the plan was to have a playdate, which changed into a movie night, which changed back into a play date. We had them over for a few hours and they just hung out and had a great time. There was a candle making craft (which will apparently be gloriously remembered as "burning things") and a piñata cat whose neck broke in the middle of breaking the piñata. HAHA! The kids had all kinds of inner circle jokes and games, including one where they all fell to the floor at the same time (It looked to me like they were playing dead? I don't know what that was all about :P) They played video games, ate cupcakes, opened gifts, and just hung out being their very own kind of silly that day. It looked to me like they had so much fun being together and it made me happy to see Vee so happy.
We actually took most pictures with V's phone, so I should ask them for those and put them here :)
V says their pictures of the doggies are cuter XD
Mr E was super into the piñata-making, btw-- the piñata cat had to have the perfect amount of sass! Haha XD
And the grandparents came to visit a couple days before! There was delicious food and yummy chocolate cake making. So good!
Here is Quijote's BDAY post for Vee 💖
Then, a few days later on a Saturday afternoon, I shot this birthday interview video. Watch before you continue reading! Spoiler alert!
For a few years now, have a little tradition of making videos of the kids being interviewed for their birthday, and Vee had been wanting to make something public for a while which I had asked them to be patient about so that we could first celebrate with our family and focus on that. It was important for me that Vee learned about making space for other people's important life moments as well, and the anniversary celebration was a really important one for my parents. I am grateful to Vee for being so mature and patient with me in my asking for a "good time" to share these news with my friends and family. I also wanted us to have lots of time to process before sharing with the world.
I especially know that this will be hard for some of my close family- for those who have religious views around sexuality which they have known for a while I do not share. I love and respect them so much and I want them to know that this is coming from deep personal introspection on Vee's part. This post is of course in no way meant antagonistically nor to hurt anyone else or worry them. I do personally worry that my family will worry. Heheh. So, while I expect these news to become part of Vee's public life very soon, I wanted to share on this blog first, since only family and a handful of my closest friends have access to it. Hopefully it will mean equal access to the news to all my family. I also wanted this to be something V shared themselves and in their own timing, as much as possible. This is something which we have talked about at length for over a year now, and something they really really wanted to do, so it is time. So, in a way, this birthday interview is a coming out video as well :)
Next year we would love to celebrate with V and join them in the July celebrations, watch them enjoy being part of the community in this way, and freely share these experiences with the world :) So we are pacing things, to give anyone who needs time to process the opportunity to do so.
Q and I have made every effort to ease the process, and we are both very close to our families and are confident in those relationships. Still, I am sure that conversations will be had, so I want to share a little bit of my perspective as a parent. I know this is a bit of a touchy subject, so I hope it will be helpful for me to be frank about where I am coming from. I want to repeat that this is me being cautious, and I do apologize if my wording comes off as aggressive- this is me being a zealous parent, if you will. I want you to know:
1. That my most important job is to oversee their safety and create a safe space for them to grow up in, and that in doing so I have responsibly shared with my children the realities of the world and human existence -openly and freely, without shame. This was done in an effort to prepare them for adulthood, but it has also been done carefully, with their age and maturity in mind.
2. That my children both know that they have my unwavering support in all their decisions, and that while I most certainly have an opinion about everything and anything, I respect them and wish for them the true freedom to live and act which every individual deserves. So long as they are careful and respectful of themselves and others, I believe that this freedom is essential to their full development into healthy, competent adults.
3. That while they should be open to all opinions and think highly of most ways of life, they can and should expect other people -regardless of intention, or their age or place in the world- to also be careful and respectful of them, and that young people, too, can choose to either express their point or view or disengage --or even ask for help if they are ever overwhelmed or uncomfortable in any situation. I hope our family especially will be loving and respectful in their approach, if they wish to talk about gender and sexuality with the children (please do so only when there is a parent present.) I also hope that they will protect their relationship with the kids above all: it has never been my policy to enforce contact with anyone --though we very much promote family and extended family time, it has always ultimately been the kids' choice whether to hang out or not, for example-- and this would most definitely also apply to anyone who would make our children uncomfortable, family or not.
4. That these personal decisions are being given importance, and that they have been properly thought out, prayed over, researched, and studied. Matters of religious belief, personal identity, and civic duty are no small part of our family activities, and they are topics of our daily conversation and thought. But I also think of these as fluid, and they are subject to change as we change. I expect the kids both to go through stages of evolution and change in the process, and I think this is a wonderful thing, a process I am excited about and curious to watch.
These are ideals -lofty ideals, I do hope- so if my child is reading this in the near or far away future, I can only hope I have made it obvious I did my best to uphold them. I know I will not ever be perfect, but I know it is my responsibility to continuously try my best. I love you and celebrate you, and I am so proud of you.
We both are. <3
Note: Older Birthday interviews can be seen by following the tag "Miss E Birthday Interviews" but we will be using Vee or V as the new nickname, so the label has also changed :)
Vee watched the birthday interview and approved it before it went up on YouTube, as is our usual way of going about it, and soon after, they added this comment to an item on their Xmas wish list, and I thought this would be a better place for it :)
ReplyDelete"A little note, i recently watched the thing mom posted and i saw i sucked at describing gynosexuality, gynosexuality is when you like people who are born female or identify as one so sorry for any confusion, i just suck at teaching or explaining."
I think Vee was having fun joking around with me, but worried about it being technically incorrect later when watching the video. We've been talking about all the words that describe identity, preference, and such. We've all been trying to study up on it because tbh, even the meaning behind the words is changing as people broaden ideas/ideals about what it means to be a person and a person who is a partner to someone else, so there's been a lot for us to catch up on and learn as we help the kiddos through their growing up process.